The article below was written by David A. Eisenberg, an associate professor of political
science at Eureka College
Posted by
Drifter
Privilege
is a sham mark of opprobrium—those who decry the privilege of others tend to
want more of itfor themselves. The dissemblance is all the more distasteful
given that the detractors of privilege typically possess, comparatively
speaking, an abundance of it. One need not be conversant in history to realize
as much. It is enough to simply survey the present. To deplore the unearned
structural advantages maintained by white males at a time when Ukrainian cities
fall and casualties rise reflects not only poor taste, but poor judgement. It
bespeaks an insensitivity or obtuseness that today’s self-designated and
self-righteous victims routinely ascribe to those the system is reputed to
benefit.
No
doubt there are beneficiaries. All societies are comprised of those who are
advantaged and those who are not—an enduring reality of human existence, as the
egregious inequalities that persisted in every society devoted to stamping them
out attest. But to suggest that in America, privilege is parceled out neatly on
the basis of skin color and chromosomal composition is ill-considered at best.
It ought to suffice to allude to Appalachian whites, Indian Americans, and a growing gender gap favoring women in higher
education to give the lie to the duplicitous platitudes that masquerade as
incontrovertible truths in the present day.
But
it is when one turns one’s gaze from America to the so-called global community
that the narrow-mindedness of those who obsess about privilege becomes most
glaring. Anyone with the luxury to fret about microaggressions in a world riven
by macroaggressions is privileged. Anyone with the liberty to assign himself
idiosyncratic pronouns, oblige others to adopt them, and punish those who do
not comply knows a good deal of privilege. Everyone who has never had his city
shelled; never been forcibly displaced from his home; never had to take up arms
to defend his life against an invading army is, as current events make plain,
tremendously privileged.
It
is an especially blinkered and self-absorbed individual who fails to appreciate
as much; the sort of person who petulantly demands that his views not only be
heard but validated. (Another privilege retained by those who stridently lament
their lack of it: the license to expunge from history those deemed to be on the
wrong side of it. The power to rewrite the past and the rules of grammar with
it! Have underprivileged people with so much privilege ever before roamed the
earth?) That education in America is bent on breeding such minds—minds
ill-equipped to contemplate the human condition and comprehend the complexities
(moral, political, material, etc.) that attend life in every era—must be ranked
one of its greatest failings. If only minds so ill-prepared to judge were not
so quick to do so. Alas…
To
be fair, the widespread myopia that afflicts so many today appears to be
congenital and what is worse, degenerative—a condition endemic to an age of
universal haste and distraction. The declining attention span of the digital
denizen ought to dispel the conceit that human sapience accrues generationally.
To make matters worse, it is not just that attention spans are in decline, but
that what people devote their limited attention to is subject to shameless
manipulation. At a time when individuals—the ostensibly underprivileged not
least among them—incessantly boast about their agency and autonomy and
intentionality, it is painfully obvious that what preoccupies them is not
self-determined.
Following
two years of around-the-clock coverage of COVID, during which time people were
impelled to agonize about the virus, the news suddenly stopped. Or rather, it
shifted focus. And in lockstep, the American people shifted theirs too.
Obsession with COVID has given way to obsession with Ukraine. The transition
was made so seamlessly and with such celerity that one wonders what the talking
heads would be droning on about had Putin decided not to launch an invasion.
Whatever might have been pronounced newsworthy, there can be no doubt that the
ongoing hostilities and resulting humanitarian crises in Myanmar, Yemen, Syria,
Sudan, Ethiopia, Mali, the Central African Republic, Burkina Faso (where?), or
any of the scores of other war-torn and neglected corners of the globe would
remain news-unworthy.
Of
course, the geopolitical consequences of the conflict in Ukraine are
disproportionately portentous, but the fact remains that before a laser pointer
was shone on Ukraine, most Americans would have been hard-pressed to locate it
on a map. This is not to suggest that one should be unmoved by the plight of
the Ukrainian people; only that from a humanitarian perspective, one should be
no less concerned about the plight of Myanmarese, Yemeni, Syrian, and Central
African people. (Indeed, given the preponderately pale complexions of the
Ukrainian people, they—per the scales of social justice—deserve less consideration
and compassion. Unlike Lady Justice, social justice is not blind, and
emphatically not colorblind.) Furthermore, their plights should highlight the
privilege of those who do not share them. If you find yourself safely removed
from a conflict zone, so safely that there is no credible prospect of suddenly
finding yourself in one, you’ve got privilege and you might want to check yours
(whatever that means) before you castigate others for theirs.
Of
course, to (re)draw attention to the vacuity of contemporary privilege-talk,
the unearned privilege that comes with being born in America amounts to much
more than finding yourself far and safely removed from the many theaters of war
that riddle the world at every moment. In terms of wealth, comfort, and freedom, Americans enjoy privileges the
vast majority of people the world over will never know. Whatever their gender
or race may be, Americans are, in an impolitic manner of speaking, the white
males of the global village.
Such
gross generalizations are intended less to offend than to encourage those who
make commensurately gross generalizations (about whites in America, for
instance) to reexamine their rhetoric. It is not just that this contemporary
fixation with privilege is hollow; it is pernicious. Privilege, however one wishes
to characterize it, does not immunize those who possess it from misfortune.
When pricked, they too bleed. The regressive tendency to categorize people on
the basis of their skin color, class, gender, sexual orientation, and so forth,
and then to intersectionally assess their merit, is dehumanizing. It forestalls
sympathy, fosters resentment, and promotes an endless cycle of recrimination
that precludes reconciliation and incites people to tear one another apart.
For
much of history, the ability to see the humanity of others—of those removed
from and foreign to oneself—was uncommon; a capacity reserved for elevated and
enlightened souls sparsely dispersed across the ages. As the distance between
man and man has diminished over time, that capacity has become more and more
accessible; a virtue no longer reserved for saints and sages, but within the
reach of everyone. It is a precious gift—a privilege, one dare say—one that
ironically is in jeopardy of being squandered by those who prattle unceasingly
about privilege and in so doing, cannot see past the privileges of others nor
apprehend their own.
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